


no sleep till Sochi

by Naraht



Series: trials of Coach Yakov [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Grand Prix Final Banquet, Mentor-Student Relationship, Non-Sexual, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 15:51:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9332321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: Forced to share a bed with Victor at the Sochi Grand Prix Final, Yakov learns more than he wants to know.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Halrloprillalar (prillalar)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prillalar/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [no sleep till Sochi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9923999) by [Caritas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caritas/pseuds/Caritas)



> Thanks to Prillalar for the [classic tropey prompt](http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/633927.html?thread=6885959#cmt6885959).

_Grand Prix Final_  
_Sochi, Russia_

Descended from a line of staunch Russian Jewish atheists, Yakov had developed his own personal set of commandments.

 _Never sleep with Lilia Baranovskaya, even for the sake of old times_ was one. _Never share a hotel room with your athletes_ was another. Both of these he had codified after hard experience. 

Waking up in the middle of the night to hear Georgi Popovich furtively jerking off while mumbling his girlfriend's name into the pillow. Never again. Waking in the morning murmuring his ex-wife's name against her neck, his face buried in her gloriously unpinned hair... well. They never had spoken of it again, at least.

Commandments were made to be broken, however fervently he might have wished otherwise.

***

Yakov had shouted until he was red in the face. Indeed, he had carried on shouting long after he was red in the face. He had brandished his Yubileyny Sport Club credit card and ISU accreditation as if they were an axe ready to fall. But it made no difference to the clerk behind the desk of the hotel in Sochi.

There were three skaters – Victor, Mila and Yuri – and three rooms reserved under Yakov's name. Total. No room had been reserved for him.

"Someone will have to share," said the desk clerk unhelpfully. "We're full tonight."

Yakov looked over his shoulder, considering the question. His three athletes were scattered around the lobby in attitudes of boredom, each in their team jackets, each staring intently at their mobile phones. Having come straight from the airport, they were an unprepossessing sight. Even Victor.

_Mila and Yuri? Out of the question. Victor and Yuri? Nuclear holocaust. Me and Yuri? A stroke by morning._

"Yuri!" he shouted. "Get your feet off that couch now!"

Yuri sulkily obliged without looking up from his phone.

In fact there was no choice. Mila and Yuri were both under eighteen; they could not share a room with an unrelated adult and they certainly could not share with one another. Which left... damn it all to hell.

"Victor! Come over here!"

***

Stepping into the hotel room with Victor at his heels, Yakov looked warily around. 

Smallish room. Bland, beige, standard decor. Television, desk, armchair, double bed. It could have been anywhere in Europe, any second-rate hotel chain.

Realisation hit. _One double bed._ Behind him, Victor whistled.

"I will murder Irina," sputtered Yakov. "I'll murder her! She made all the arrangements, she confirmed... I have better things to do with my time..."

"It's not a problem," said Victor brightly, his smile suggesting a certain strain. "I'll just go and spend the night with Chris and Phillippe." 

"Not before the competition, you won't."

Although modern sports science might not agree, one of Yakov's strictest commandments banned his athletes from all sexual release during the two weeks leading up to a competition. Victor sharing a room with Christophe Giacometti and his new choreographer-boyfriend would be within neither the letter nor the spirit of the law.

"I'll sleep on the floor."

"Not before the competition, you won't," repeated Yakov.

Victor might be three decades younger, but Yakov had studied the MRIs with the sports doctors, and was fairly certain that Victor's joints were in worse condition than his own. In his day there had been no quadruple jumps. In his day even the triple axel had been new.

Despite this, Yakov certainly wasn't going to offer to sleep on the floor.

"It's a large bed," he said gruffly. "We'll make do."

He considered giving Victor a brief talk about how they were both adults, but decided to give it a miss on the basis that they were both adults. At twenty-seven, Victor was now old enough to be the father of Yakov's youngest skaters. 

"It'll be fine, Yakov," said Victor. "I even packed pyjamas!"

He winked, as if amused by the idea that Yakov could be overcome with lust at the sight of a body that he had tended and tortured for the past sixteen years.

 _I knew you when you were smaller than Yura,_ Yakov wanted to say. _I held back that ridiculous long hair of yours when you drank too much cognac at seventeen and were sick on the ice the next morning. I know your weight and your resting pulse better than you do. I tell you what to eat, when to drink, and when you may and may not wrap your hand around your dick. I have seen you sliced open by the surgeons after you were carried off the ice on a stretcher. Your body holds no terrors for me. I made you._

But of course Victor knew this.

Yakov had never had much patience for coaches who said that their athletes were like their children. Apart from the appalling sentimentality, how would he know what a parent was meant to feel? Lilia had certainly never wanted to find out.

"Thank heavens for that," said Yakov. "Just don't stay out too late."

***

Nowadays Victor could mostly be trusted to look after himself on the night before a competition. Yakov made the rounds of his younger skaters, ensuring that they had ordered something approved from the room service menu and were settled safely watching re-runs of _Fizruk_.

After that he went down to the hotel bar to find a bite to eat and – mostly – something to drink. Having to share a bed with Victor might not be the worst fate in the world, but facing it without alcohol would be unwise. The bar was bizarrely Bavarian-themed, but they were at least able to offer him decent vodka. 

Yakov had taken his first shot, and was busy cursing the smoking ban that had spread even to Russia, when he spotted Celestino Cialdini sitting further down the bar nursing something fruity and tropical-looking.

"Done with your skaters tonight?" said Yakov in English, as clearly as he could. When he was a young man, learning English had not seemed much of a priority. He regretted that now.

"Just the one this year. Yuri. And yes, he's in his room now."

"Yuri Katsuki, yes." Victor seemed to rate his artistic expression, although he lacked the technical skills to pose any threat. "I have a Yuri also. Trouble?"

"Pardon?"

"Trouble? To manage?"

Celestino laughed. "Yuri? No. It's more trouble getting him to relax. I practically had to drag him off the rink after the practice. Probably a drink tonight would do him good."

"My Yuri is trouble."

"And very good," said Celestino.

This Yakov took without comment. Of course Yuri was good. He would not have taken him on otherwise.

A silence. Celestino smiled encouragingly at him.

 _Do you know how badly this second-rate hotel screwed up?_ Yakov imagined himself asking. _Did you know that Victor and I are actually sharing, not only a room, but actually a bed? Have you ever heard of such incompetence? Only in Russia. I would send a complaint to the ISU, if our ISU board member didn't already hate me after that ridiculous press conference of Victor's last year. All of my skaters are trouble, every single one._

If his English had been up to it, that was what he would have had said. But it was a silly complaint, and he had no idea where to begin expressing it, whether it would make sense or garner any sympathy from a man with whom, after all, he had only a nodding acquaintance.

So he settled for questioningly raising his empty glass, the universal language. "Another drink?"

"Too kind," said Celestino.

They spent the rest of the evening drinking side by side, watching the replay of the pairs skate on the television in the corner of the bar.

***

Opening the door of the darkened hotel room, Yakov breathed a sigh of relief. Ten o'clock and all was quiet. Where was Victor? Blessedly somewhere else. In half an hour Yakov would be angry about his top athlete staying out late on a competition night. But first he would get into the bed, claim his territory, and...

From the bed, the blue light of a phone screen. Victor sat up, set the phone aside and switched on the light. He was smiling.

"There you are, Yakov. I was starting to worry."

 _Pyjamas_ was perhaps an overstatement. Victor was wearing his favourite black T-shirt, the one with a deep v-neck that showed his collarbone. But he was clothed, which was very considerate of him.

Yakov made a disapproving noise. "You act like you're enjoying this!"

"We should have done it years ago. It's like a slumber party. We can get to know each other better. It'll make the whole thing more fun."

"Winning your fifth consecutive Grand Prix Final won't be fun?"

Victor shrugged. "We'll see."

There was nothing to say to that. 

Yakov shrugged in reply and went off to get ready for bed. He hadn't packed pyjamas himself, but an undershirt and boxers would be sufficient to serve the cause of decency. It wasn't as if Victor gave a damn.

It was a double bed, there should have been ample room for both of them. But 180 centimeters and 70 solid kilograms of Victor Nikiforov was something to be reckoned with, whether or not he was keeping politely to his side of the bed. Even the mattress bowed itself before him. 

Yakov got into bed, pulled up the covers, turned over, bumped a foot against Victor's smooth calf, swore. He was beginning to think that he was not nearly drunk enough for this.

"You never had to sleep two to a bed back in the glorious Soviet days?" asked Victor.

A communal apartment in Danilovsky. The smell of cooking and the sound of other people's gossip. He had shared a bed with his younger brother and they had shared the room with their parents. When he started winning competitions, they had been given a place of their own.

"I have not," said Yakov, "shared a bed in years."

"I'm used to it."

A long pause. Yakov was damned if he would take _that_ bait. 

"Makkachin sleeps with me," said Victor, unexpectedly, a little wistfully.

"Oh. Go to sleep, Victor."

***

He slept like a stone. 

When he woke, the thin light of dawn was filtering through the gaps in the blackout curtains. On the bed beside him there was nothing but the wrinkled sheets. From somewhere nearby there came a low, pained moan. 

He lifted his head from the pillow and saw that Victor was lying on the carpet by the bed, doing his morning stretches. Leaning forward in a full split, Victor groaned again, just a little louder than strictly necessary.

Yakov opened his mouth to complain, then bit his tongue. _First thing in the morning,_ he remembered saying, _every day, without fail. At your age, Vitya, your body is looking for any excuse to let you down. You can't wait till you get to the rink!_

"Oh, Yakov, you're awake!" said Victor brightly. "See, I'm doing my stretches."

"So that's what you call a split. No wonder your spirals are so sloppy. Do it again, properly!"

Yakov let his head fall back to the pillow and reached for the remote control. He lay in bed, watching the latest news about the Paris Agreement, until Victor had finished stretching and got into the shower.

By the time Yakov stepped out of the shower himself, it looked as though the contents of the GUM cosmetics department had exploded across the bathroom countertops. Victor was still very much present, peering into the mirror with his hair pulled back by a black hairband. He was doing something very precise to his eyelashes with a tiny brush.

Yakov wrapped a towel around his waist, changed his mind, decided to use it to dry his hair instead. "Don't you do your makeup in the dressing room?"

"There will be photographers when we get off the bus," explained Victor patiently. "You don't want me to end up on the cover of _Otdohni_ with eyelashes so pale they're invisible, do you?"

Yakov shrugged. Glancing at his own reflection in the mirror, he considered a comb. But he would be wearing his hat. There was no point in going overboard for the press.

"I'm going to make sure that Yura and Mila are awake," he said. "And then I'm going for a smoke. I'll see you at the bus."

***

On their second night in Sochi, they sat in bed together to watch the short program on television, because there was nowhere else to sit and see the screen. 

Yakov ordered a cheeseburger from room service and ate it, balancing the plate on his belly, as he watched. Victor had a chicken salad, and waited until the climax – in all senses – of Giacometti's program before trying to steal a French fry from his plate. Yakov slapped his hand away.

During Victor's program, they both stopped eating to concentrate on the skating. It was technically irreproachable, if rather soulless by Victor's usual standard. A replay of his devastating quad flip, scribing a weightless, almost effortless arc across the screen.

"I just felt numb afterwards," said Victor.

An icy terror clutched Yakov's heart. " _What?_ Where?"

"Inside."

Preserve them, _feelings_. Still better than the alternative. Yakov let out a sigh of relief.

"You get like this every winter. Have you been using that lamp I bought you?"

"Yes, but..."

"If it's not enough, you can go and talk to the doctors when we get back. They'll give you something. It's biochemical."

"I don't think this is biochemical."

"What else can it be?"

Yakov felt a pang of envy for his father who, after surviving the war, had spent his life tending to the simple needs of a stamping machine on the ZIL assembly line. _Why must it be like this, when the rest of him functions so well?_

"Life."

"You're just tired. This isn't like you, you're sounding like Gosha."

"Tomorrow, at the press conference, they'll ask me about my plans for next season. Already."

Yakov waited. The room heating switched off, a sudden blank where there had been the white noise hum of air rushing from the duct. Victor said nothing.

"Well?"

"More quads, I guess. What else is there?"

 _You selfish prick,_ thought Yakov. _You silly, entitled boy._

The worst of it was that Yakov wasn't entirely surprised. Usually by this point in the season, Victor was resisting his old, familiar routines in favour of trying out new ideas. But so far there had been little sign of choreographic inspiration. He had been grateful – it had made his life easier – but he ought to have realised that it was an ominous sign.

"So boring to win gold," he said, mimicking the affected inflection that Victor sometimes put on. "What do you want next time, platinum? You are even more selfish and ungrateful than I thought, Victor. Do you know how many skaters would kill for even one chance at what you've had?"

"All of them," said Victor, flat, a lesson learned by heart ages before.

 _What I wouldn't have given for a gold at Lake Placid,_ thought Yakov, but that had been decades ago, another life. _He's what I have instead. I made him what he is._

"You have a duty not to waste the talents you've been given!"

"I know." A long silence. The television had gone to commercials. "I'd like to try to sleep now, Yakov."

"Have a French fry first," said Yakov. "But only one."

***

In the middle of the night, he woke to find Victor draped warm across his chest, Victor's face nestled into the crook of his neck. His nose was pressed against Victor's light, fine hair. Victor slept as though he were a little boy, in trusting, dreamless relaxation. 

Yakov sighed and reached up to lay a hand on Victor's back. He rubbed small circles against Victor's shoulderblade, the thin, worn fabric of the T-shirt moving with the motions of his fingertips.

 _Vitya, Vitya,_ he thought. _They'll call you my life's achievement, won't they? Does it all really mean so little to you? Perhaps when you retire, I'll retire too. Only, please, not yet._

Drowsing, Victor moved almost imperceptibly, drew a slightly deeper breath. Yakov quickly stilled his hand, but left it where it lay. Victor seemed to subside back into sleep. 

For a long while, Yakov lay awake.

***

_Two evenings later_

"Time for the ISU gangbang," said Victor sullenly.

Thankfully he had the decency to do it out of Yuri's earshot, but Yakov was still unimpressed. He smacked Victor on the back of the head. Then he pushed the button for the elevator. "Don't behave like a child!"

Yuri came running down the hallway to catch up, breaking his strides with one sloppy grand jeté. He pushed past Victor and stared up at him with narrowed eyes. "Wow, what did _you_ do?"

"Nothing you need to know about," said Yakov. "Worry about your own behaviour! And fix your tie, that knot is a disgrace!"

The doors slid open. Victor raised his chin, squared his shoulders, smiled, and stepped into the elevator as though he were stepping onto a stage.

"Don't worry, Yakov," he said. "The performance starts now."

Then he reached down to fix Yuri's tie. His own, naturally, was impeccable.

***

Yakov Feltsman had entered the Grand Prix Final banquet as a king in triumph, with the five-time Grand Prix Final champion, the new Junior Grand Prix Final champion, and the ladies' singles bronze medalist to boot.

He departed in a less expansive mood, dragging Yuri Plisetsky away from the dance floor by the neck of his suit, like an unruly kitten. 

"No one," he said, punctuating his words with a shake, "asked you to sneak two glasses of champagne and then get into a dance battle!"

"He did!" protested Yuri. "The other Yuri! I said there was only room for one of us in seniors next year, and he just..."

"You accepted a challenge from a pathetic, drunken failure, Yurka, and you _lost_! _You lost_! Let that teach you a lesson! You embarrassed yourself!" 

Yakov made a mental note to see about getting Yuri more rigorous dance training. Watching the boy desperately flailing his thin limbs on the dance floor, only to be roundly defeated by a mindblowingly drunk Japanese breakdancer – a _very good_ mindblowingly drunk Japanese breakdancer – had been one of the most pathetic sights of his coaching career. Trying to appear as if he wasn't watching the proceedings with interest, Yakov had been forced to hide his laughter with the brim of his hat.

"You didn't see Mila or Victor getting themselves dragged into a dance battle, did you? No! They talked to the judges, they talked to the ISU representatives..."

This was a dangerous precedent, holding up Victor Nikiforov as any sort of example for impressionable young skaters. But the unbelievable idiocy at Torino 2006 had remained a private matter, and the lawyers assured him that the 2008 sex tape had been firmly suppressed. Perhaps Victor was finally growing up. Or at least becoming more discreet.

"Victor was cheering me on," said Yuri sulkily.

"You're both named Yuri, you know."

"And?"

Yakov delivered the final _coup de grace_ , wondering whether Yuri was really that dim or simply drunk. "He was cheering for your opponent!"

Yuri spit out an incomprehensible sound. For a moment Yakov thought he was going to be sick on the carpet of the hotel hallway. The new hope of Russian men's skating. It remained to be seen what the undisciplined little shit would do with himself in seniors next year. But at least there were signs of life after Victor.

Thank God, there was the room at last. Yakov extracted the key card from his pocket, opened the door, and thrust Yuri across the threshold. 

"Take a shower, brush your teeth, drink two glasses of water. Then go to sleep. If I hear that you snuck downstairs again, I'll have you skating laps for a week."

After he left, Yakov realised his error: he had let slip that he wasn't planning to return to the banquet himself. But it couldn't be helped. There was no way he was going back.

In a quiet, empty hotel room, finally on his own, Yakov breathed a deep and satisfied breath. Another successful Grand Prix Final. _Winner Yakov Feltsman,_ in every sense that mattered. He took his suit and tie off, poured himself a whisky from the minibar, and climbed into bed to watch inane television shows until he got sleepy.

Close to midnight, with still no sign of Victor, Yakov turned off the television and slid under the covers. Grand Prix banquets usually finished at a respectable hour. Either Victor had found an afterparty somewhere or, more likely, he was making his own in someone else's hotel room. He hoped that they were enjoying the experience. Scratch that, he hoped that _Victor_ was enjoying the experience. If this was how he chose to celebrate his victory, he deserved it.

And Yakov was just as happy to have the bed to himself. He drifted into glorious, solitary slumber.

***

Barely half an hour later he was woken by the bed dipping suddenly beneath him. Out of nowhere, there was Victor sitting on the edge, right next to him. 

A hand resting on his shoulder. Victor stank of stale champagne and sweat. "Yakov?"

Yakov jerked awake with a surge of adrenalin: _fight, arrest, scandal, drunken accident?_ Most likely just Yuri Plisetsky puking his guts out, but would Victor really have woken him for that?

"What?" he croaked groggily. "What happened?"

A long pause. And then Victor said something that, in sixteen years, Yakov had never heard from him before.

"Yakov, I think I'm in love."


End file.
